[P] [festival] cherry wine

[Seraphina]

FROM THE GODS WHO SIT IN GRANDEUR
grace is somehow violent

--

As soon as she made to approach him, he was gone, a wisp of ebony folding in upon itself; not especially discouraged by this development, she followed him away from the festivities, darting over gnarled roots and twining around trees with the grace of a creature that was not quite in her element. (The forests of Delumine were quite different than the vast expanses of the Mors – everything felt different to her, even the way the ground stood so stable and harsh beneath her hooves.) She followed him until, in the distance, she could only just make out the low hum of merrymaking, the flush of golden light; but with each step she had taken, she fell further away from the atmosphere of it, descending into the shadows like the sun to the horizon at the day’s end. Cinnamon and sandalwood still cling to the inside of her lungs in a persistent – but not unpleasant - warmth, even as the crisp night air began to banish the scents of the festival. As the Dawn Court was stripped away from her, the forest arose to take its place - fireflies and starlight to illuminate her path and the lulling whispers of birdsong to replace the melodies. In truth, it didn’t take her long to catch up with him, her odd eyes trailing up his frame to find the unnerving, ghostly white of his own, but, in the forest, things seemed to disappear more quickly than they did on the sands. (She lingered close enough to him to notice how the moonlight caught on the threads of gold marbled along his antlers; desaturated as they were in the soft silver light, they still gleamed like precious stones. She caught that ghost of a smile, too, even if there was no warmth to it – all courtesy, like her own.)

Charcoal ears twitched upright to catch his words – his tone implied apathy, but she thought that she sensed a hint of a bite to it. When combined with his words, Seraphina found herself reasonably sure that, whatever Vasher sought, he had not found it in Denocte. (Though perhaps that was just what she wanted to hear.) She considered her words for only a fraction of a second before, with the slightest incline of her skull, she found herself asking, “And just what is your standard of well, then?” If he was discontent among Caligo’s children, perhaps he hadn’t slipped out of her grasp yet.

At his next question, a hint of something like a shade of amusement momentarily flickered across her features. “Maxence? Hardly.” As far as she knew, her sovereign was not even aware of her brief engagement with Vasher. She knew that it would do little good for her attempts to decrease tension between the nation to admit that her injuries, temporary (and consented to) as they were, had been given to her by anyone who intended to align his lot with Denocte. ”I’m here of my own accord – call it persistence. I still haven’t given up on convincing you to come to Solterra.” Seraphina was not entirely sure why she was so invested in this particular stallion, so intent on bringing him to the Day Court. He was useful, of course, and their battle had left her with the impression that there was considerably more to him than he might like to be believed. Perhaps that was it; she had the distinct feeling that there was quite a bit of him to unravel, and, in a way, that intrigued her.

@

@Ammon - <3